Plastic bags, that is bags of thin flexible plastic film material, have become increasingly popular and, in various forms, are used for an ever-increasing variety of purposes, including grocery bags, garbage bags, lawn or yard care bags, product packaging bags, and the like.
The bags, because of the thin film-like nature thereof, are, notwithstanding their adaptability to many tasks, frequently difficult to handle, that is store, individually dispense and open for use. As a matter of manufacturing expedience and handling convenience, the plastic bags are frequently provided in a roll of a continuous strip of bags formed from an endless tube of plastic film transversely bonded or seamed with adjacent parallel severance lines, normally lines of minute perforations, to allow for a severance of the individual bags from the roll. Rolls of grocery bags formed in this manner will be noted in U.S. Pat. No. 4,793,539, issued Dec. 27, 1988, to Haenni et al.
The Haenni et al patent also illustrates a manner of positioning the roll and dispensing the bags therefrom wherein the roll is mounted within the base of a checkout counter and the bags individually dispensed through a bag severing and dispensing nozzle mounted within the countertop remote from the roll.
While bag storage and dispensing in this manner is quite acceptable for use in a grocery store environment, such an arrangement would not be feasible in providing for bag access under many other conditions, for example in the yard for lawn clippings and debris, in an industrial environment for either product packaging or waste materials collection, or even in a home kitchen for garbage bag storage and dispensing.
While various forms of dispensers for sheet material, including wrapping paper, paper toweling, and the like, are known, including elongate containers of both circular and rectangular cross section, such containers are often rather elaborately constructed units adapted for particular products having little relationship to plastic film bags and the problems attendant to dispensing and use thereof.